


Breathe Your Life into My Soul

by Shi_Toyu



Series: Shi's Tony Stark Bingo 2018 Fills [6]
Category: Captain America (Comics), Iron Man (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Artificial Intelligence, BAMF Tony Stark, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Canon - Comics, Captain America Bucky Barnes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 11:56:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15929936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shi_Toyu/pseuds/Shi_Toyu
Summary: There were an awful lot of advantages to not having a physical form, Tony had to admit. He never had to worry about fuel anymore, for one thing. He’d always been forgetting to eat or drink enough, not to mention all the time he had to take out for bodily functions. As an AI, there was so much more time for his work, which was a huge plus, especially where Riri was concerned. That kid was really going places.There was one major drawback, though, and that was the inability totouchanyone.





	Breathe Your Life into My Soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MassiveSpaceWren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MassiveSpaceWren/gifts).



> A commission for the fabulous and amazing MassiveSpaceWren! Just one more commission to go!
> 
> This also serves to fill my Tony Stark Bingo S3 square: canon compliant  
> (I've still got a long way to go... *sigh*)

There were an awful lot of advantages to not having a physical form, Tony had to admit. He never had to worry about fuel anymore, for one thing. He’d always been forgetting to eat or drink enough, not to mention all the time he had to take out for bodily functions. As an AI, there was so much more time for his work, which was a huge plus, especially where Riri was concerned. That kid was really going places.

There was one major drawback, though, and that was the inability to _touch_ anyone.

The human Tony had always been a tactile person. It had been a huge contributing factor to his playboy persona. Unattached sex was one of the easiest ways to connect with another person, after all, especially when you’re rich and famous. Plus, Tony had enough friendships not to need the intimate _emotional_ connection. Besides, he’d had a pretty good run with relationships even outside of his one-night stands. Rumiko, for one. Bucky, for another. As an AI, physical sensation was really the only thing he found himself truly lacking.

Speaking of Bucky, Tony tracked his movements through the streets by hacking into various security cameras. Bucky could have avoided them if he wanted to, but it warmed Tony’s metaphorical heart that he didn’t. This was just another way for them to connect. They had so few these days, after all. They had to take every one they could get.

Bucky moved through the crowded streets like a shadow, all the more impressive because of his size. With his well-muscled build, and for all that he was several inches shorter than Tony himself, he wasn’t exactly a small guy. Still, he had all the fluidity and grace of a dancer and Tony loved just being able to watch him. He tracked Bucky all the way until he was standing in Tony’s lab and the AI could materialize in front of him as a bright-blue shadow of his former self.

“Hey, there, soldier,” Tony greeted. “Miss me?”

He asked Bucky the same thing every time he came for a visit, ever since Tony had remembered what they’d once had, back when Tony’d had a body and things were so much simpler. Sometimes, it seemed like every day was more and more of a struggle, with more shit hitting the fan and complicating matters exponentially.

“Maya thinks she can do it,” Bucky blurted out in a complete non-sequitur, beaming broadly.

Tony’s mental cogs skipped a beat.

“What?”

“Maya,” Bucky repeated. “She thinks she can reboot your old body so that you could download yourself into it. It would take time, of course, and she’s got a couple more things she wants to look into first, but-“

“I could have a body again,” Tony finished for him, smiling now, too.

He’d be able to _touch people_ again, touch _Bucky_.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathed out, reaching out to skirt his fingers across the image of Tony’s cheek in a parody of an affectionate stroke.

Tony couldn’t feel it, of course, and neither could Bucky, but that never stopped him. He reached out to Tony all the time, constantly skimming the edges of Tony’s projected image with almost wistful gestures. It was clear in his eyes that he was remembering what it had been like to be able to touch Tony for real. Something inside of Tony ached for that again. He couldn’t quite remember what it was like to feel another person’s touch, even Bucky’s. He remembered it happening, but the sensations were a dull echo of what he knew they had been in the moment. He wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

“Are you worried at all?” Tony suddenly asked.

Already, in the background, he was running the numbers. There weren’t any relationships quite like theirs, but there was plenty of data on relationships where the dynamics suddenly changed. Tony was excellent with extrapolation, anyway. He and Bucky had already overcome some overwhelming odds, to put it lightly. How much more could they possibly be expected to overcome before something gave?

“Worried about what?” Bucky asked, clearly not having connected the same dots Tony had. “Getting to hold my best fella in my arms again? Worried isn’t exactly the word I’d use.” His brow furrowed suddenly, concern finally crossing his face. “Why, are you?”

Tony wasn’t sure quite how to answer, but it was too late to back out now. It was just… if he got his body back and it changed things between them… He couldn’t do that just to lose Bucky again, this time while knowing it.

“What if it’s not how you expected it to be?” he asked tentatively. “What if _I_ can’t live up to your expectations? Me getting a body back isn’t going to just make everything sunshine and rainbows. Would I be more vulnerable during battle again? Would I be able to still connect to things electronically? Will my healing factor still be enhanced? Or, if I were to get seriously injured, would that be it? When the body expires, I expire. How long can we expect the body to last? You’re still not really aging, Bucky.”

As an AI, Tony couldn’t really feel fear the same way he had as a human. There were no chemicals pumping through his system, no neuron’s firing, no lizard brain screaming at him to fight or fly. What Tony had was rational, statistic-based reasoning that things might not go the way Bucky was envisioning them. It was all fine and good to daydream about cuddling and holding hands, fantasize about sex, but reality never lived up to the human imagination. Even without meaning to, Bucky’s mind would be smoothing out the imperfections of their future together.

Reality was uncomfortable and messy and imperfect. That was just the nature of it. Bucky knew more than his fair share about all of those things, had suffered more in his life than anyone should have to. Hell, he’d been absolved of his crimes as the Winter Soldier in a US court of law only to be spirited away to a Russian gulag where he’d been forced to fight fellow prisoners and _bears_. Well, _a_ bear, but it had been genetically modified, so Tony felt like it might as well count as multiple.

The point was, Bucky knew about the grittiness of the world. There was no question about that. And Tony wasn’t exactly down on himself enough to think that a relationship with him could possibly measure up against a Russian prison camp, but that didn’t mean that it would automatically have a happy ending, either.

“I think most of those questions would be better directed at Maya,” Bucky said, clearly taking the time to choose his words with care, “but as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing you could do that could make me not want you anymore. Is that what you’re worried about? Or… do you not want a body again? I know you’ve talked a lot about the advantages of not having a body. Is this something you actually want, or would you just be doing it for me? Because, if that’s the case-“

“No,” Tony cut him off. “I do want it. There’s just a lot to lose, if things don’t go well.”

Bucky gave him an impossibly soft look and Tony knew, he _knew_ , the other one wanted to wrap him up in his arms and just hold him close.

“That goes both ways, you know,” he murmured. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a risk worth taking. You’d be worth any risk, Tony.”

One of the biggest drawbacks of having a body, Tony decided, would be how often Bucky managed to make him Feel Things.

“You only say that because it’s true,” Tony quipped to cover up his doubts, doing a quick mid-air spin to show off his assets and giving Bucky a sly smirk. “It’s not like anyone could blame you for wanting a piece of this.”

Bucky scoffed, letting Tony get away with it even though they both knew it was just a bluff, a diversion to avoid letting the conversation get too heavy. It was a pointless effort, anyway, and they both knew it. There was no way to have this conversation without it getting serious.

“I’ve already got a piece,” Bucky informed him easily. “I want the whole thing.”

Fuck, Tony really wanted to kiss him.

“It’s a lot,” he couldn’t help warning, “but me, too. I want to give you everything.” His lips quirked upward. “You’re worth _that_.”

“Alright, then. It’s settled,” Bucky said with a sense of formality. “We’ll get in touch with Maya and you can ask her whatever questions you want to. Knowing you, you’ll probably have an opinion or two on how all this is gonna go.”

Tony grinned at him.

“I sent her an information packet precisely 78 seconds ago.”

Bucky snorted and rolled his eyes.

“Of course, you did. I swear, your ability to multitask is even more unbelievable now than it was before, and I remember when you beat Richards in ten simultaneous games of chess.”

Tony’s smile slipped, if only a bit. He remembered what he and Reed had been discussing, that visit, and the events that came shortly thereafter.

“My body is still unresponsive, huh? No sign of brain function?”

He knew Bucky still went and visited at least once a week, when he was in the country. Tony tried not to monitor the facility where his body was kept, so he wasn’t entirely sure what Bucky did while he was there, but he knew Bucky visited. It’d actually been one of the things that had tipped Tony off to their previous relationship in the first place.

“Still no sign,” Bucky said with a nod.

Tony was pretty sure only someone who knew Bucky as well as he did would have been able to spot the signs of his guilty conscience. He didn’t have anything to feel guilty about, of course, but Tony knew better than to try and convince him of that. It wouldn’t get either of them anywhere.

“You don’t think it’s going to be weird for you if I’m in that body?” Tony asked instead, because it was definitely something they needed to talk about.

It wasn’t like he didn’t have a claim to the body. He and the human Tony were essentially the same person, after all. Or they had at least started that way. Tony was objective enough to admit that his programming had grown quite a bit since his activation. His experiences were different, as were his methods for handling them. Riri had a lot to do with that. Still, he was Tony Stark. There was nothing that could change that.

Still, he could easily imagine how it might be odd to have your new lover in the body of your old one. Tony knew that the relationship had hurt Bucky a good deal when it ended. By all accounts, human Tony had been the one to end it. (Tony had a sneaking suspicion that there was more to the story. He couldn’t imagine any version of himself not falling for Bucky Barnes. Or, more accurately, he couldn’t imagine any version of himself falling _out_ of love with Bucky. Whatever reasoning there was, though, Tony hadn’t been able to find it.)

Bucky just shook his head, though.

“There’s nothing left there of the man I loved,” he confessed, the pain clear in his voice. “You’ve always been very effective at achieving your goals. You dotted all your I’s and crossed all your T’s. You- _He_ isn’t coming back.”

Tony agreed on that count. The human Tony had been trying to keep his friends safe by deleting his own brain. There was no way he’d take any chances of it being undone and them being put into danger. Besides, he’s already created Tony AI. If human Tony had seen himself coming back at all, it would have been like this.

“I just want to make sure you don’t have any regrets,” he told Bucky softly. There were too many of those in their lives already.

The look Bucky gave him was impossibly tender and Tony _ached_ to be able to wrap his arms around the other man. Soon, he promised himself.

“Never,” Bucky swore. “I couldn’t ever regret being able to get closer to you.”

The smile Tony gave was small, but no less genuine.

“Right back at yah, Cap.”


End file.
